BowelScreen

BowelScreen is Ireland’s free bowel screening programme. We screen healthy people who do not have symptoms. We do this so that we can find and treat bowel cancer at an early stage.

Part of National Screening Service

What we do

We strive to reduce how many people get sick and die from bowel cancer.

Here is some of the work we do:

Bowel screening for people aged 59 to 69 at appropriate intervals.
Quick referrals for anyone who needs further diagnostic tests, such as a colonoscopy.
Making BowelScreen services accessible to all, for example providing longer or group appointments and information in braille and international languages.

We use a free home-test kit known as a faecal immunochemical test, or FIT test, to screen for bowel cancer. The test checks for a certain level of blood in a person’s poo.

Bowel cancer is the second most common cancer in men and the third most common cancer in women. You have a higher chance of getting bowel cancer as you get older.

Bowel screening information for the public - on HSE.ie